Straight to the point or all over the place

Солярис (1972)

So, it turns out Солярис is not just a boring pretentious old soviet art-house drab, it is also not good as a movie. As in, it’s not a movie in its current state. By an old soviet tradition it is a two-parter, with an entr’acte in the middle. And you can throw away about 90% of the first part. It provides neither setting, nor even exposition. It starts with random undefined people talking for no reason about random buzzworrd high-concept stuff at a typical poor backwards countryside house and entertains you with pointless prolonged shots of a rain. After which it has an unending black and white speechless driving sequence with ancient pfx, which serves absolutely no purpose. And only after an hour or more in, the actual movie starts with laughable garbage-bin-vision docking sequence. The rest, while is low budget, feely, boring and pointless is at least a comprehensible art-house Kubrick-like movie.

If you have nothing to say, why would you waste the film (also rumoured, a waste on 3 re-shoots of the Сталкер). I dislike ussr a lot, but if i to use soviet iconography — it is a criminal formalistic actionistic waste of peoples’ communal resources (that is not counting precious workers’ time).

There are some iconic no-budget SFX and maybe an iconic shot or two, but overall in its current cut it is atrocious.